FLOSS News

I just noticed that I hadn’t posted anything here for what feels like ages – since August the 15th.

So I thought, hmmm, better write something.

But what? A quick update on what’s been going on perhaps? That’ll do…

I’ve been working quite a bit with the brilliant free and open source vtiger CRM recently. Looking at some of the less widely used features and updating our training materials for the recent 5.10 release. I’ve also just submitted a small patch for the Customer Portal feature, to do with its web layout and have been thinking about how best to improve this, and the Webforms modules, to make them easier to customise.

On the 21st July 2009 I reported how Amazon had made it really easy for me to reclaim the cost of the Windows XP license on a new Asus netbook. This was a very popular post for my humble blog; especially after appearing on Slashdot thanks to reader and Digital Tipping Point producer Christian Einfeldt.

Finally.

My wife’s PC was the last bastion of proprietary software hell remaining in our home (and we have quite a few PCs). 2 days ago, Helen explained that she’d been having a nightmare with Windows. You’d start to login and immediately it would log you out again! Nice. And there was no easy way to prevent it. “Safe Mode” did the same thing. Very helpful – not. Googling threw up a lot of people with the same experience and some rather dodgy sounding workarounds to rectify the situation.

Following my earlier post about getting the Microsoft Tax on the Asus netbook refunded very efficiently and painlessly by Amazon, I’ve been doing a little reading, formatting, re-partitioning, installing and updating.

The newest PC in The Open Sourcerer’s household is now duly christened, cleansed and freed from proprietary software hell and will, from this moment forth, be known as Magrat. All our machines are named after characters from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.

Yesterday I received a great prize from the people at Miserware for helping with the Beta trial of their power saving software for Linux computers; a new and very shiny Asus 1008HA netbook PC.

This weekend my wife suggested we went for a walk in the Bourne Woods near where we live.

There was a great deal of activity in this Forestry Commission owned tract of woodland back in 2000 when they filmed part of the Roman epic Gladiator. Now, Russell Crowe is back in Farnham this time donning his green tights and hanging out with a band of Merry Men for a remake of Robin Hood.

How bizarre is this?

Ubuntu Cola

It’s well over a week now since I started using the Miserware MicroMiser software. I have it installed on all the Ubuntu PCs we have at home and on two laptops too. I have noticed no adverse effects from running the software. In fact you really do forget it is there.

I’m quite chuffed!

If you recall I changed the look of this site last week after building my first Wordpress theme.

A passer by called Kirrus suggested I submit it to the Wordpress Theme Directory. Which I thought was a cracking idea and one that hadn’t even crossed my mind. I sent it in, a few days later I got an email suggesting I made a couple of minor alterations:

My friend Alan sent me an invitation to sign up for a beta trial of MiserWare’s MicroMiser power saving software.

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time now. It is time for a small face-lift.

I spend quite a bit of my time doing work for clients on Joomla! including building clean templates from a graphic designer’s images. But I haven’t needed to build a template (theme) for Wordpress before which felt like I’d been missing out on something.

What seems like many moons ago, I posted a brief article about starting this year’s Chilli crop. I “planted” the seeds much earlier than usual (last day of January rather than sometime during March) and I used a different sowing technique to see if the germination could be speeded up. Here’s that first post with a couple of pictures of how I started the seeds off. I said back then that I would also plant some in the more traditional manner, but to be honest I had such excellent results from this trial I did not need to start off any more seedlings at all.

After much time and little thought, I have accepted the apparently inevitable and signed up to Twitter. I have now started tweeting - I think.

As everyone else seems to say:

Follow me on Twitter

Once I get some time I will find a plugin for Wordpress (any good recommendations anyone?) so you can see what me and my followers are up to in the minutiae of our daily endeavours.

Well today I was amazed.

I bought, on the suggestion of my colleague Alan Bell, the I-Plate for BT’s master socket. It costs about a tenner including postage and there are lots of happy people who saw their broadband speeds increase when they used it.

Well, it arrived at lunchtime today and after puzzling a bit because of some strange extension wiring, we managed to work out how to plug it in.

Here’s what my cheap and old ADSL router said before I plugged in the I-Plate:

Downstream
Upstream

SNR Margin
7.1
12.0
dB

Line Attenuation
42.4
31.0
dB

Data Rate
1888
832
kbps

And here is what it said in the time it took us to walk back downstairs to my office:

It had to be done. We don’t often get snow like this down here.